I've been invited to start a thread to see if there is interest in adding some additional program information to the XML data.

I originally purchased a Zinwell Freeview decoder in April, but I'm now using an HTPC for Freeview. What I miss now after using the Zinwell is the programme rating in the EPG. This was useful to know if my kids could watch a program or not. It also showed if the program source was HD, Dolby 5.1 surround, or had subtitles. This just appears at the end of the programme description. I would like my HTPC experience to be as good as the Freeview harddrive recorders coming out soon.

If enough people are interested then the person or people involved in the EPG compilations could well modify the software to include this information.

So please give you opinions and more the merrier.

I'm also wanting opinions on another change which will be useful to me and hopefully other Freeview users. TV1 broadcasts BBC World for around 4 hours in the early hours of the morning, and there are some programmes I like to record. Currently I need to lookup the website to find the time details and set the recording manually, and this is all a hassle and time consuming. What I am suggesting is the Freeview XML includes the portion of the BBC World listings for TV1 for the period it is broadcasting BBC World. This would make life so much easier, and you will may find you will want to record some of these programmes yourself.

The Freeview data in the EPG isn't currently as well populated as the Sky data which is available. The script which generates the EPG files does some post processing to find out the ratings etc. of the shows which currently only works for the Sky feed. If you want the best data available at the moment then I'd suggest switching to that.

I haven't yet taken the time to figure out if all the content nibbles are available in the raw Freeview EPG data to extract ratings data etc. Are you saying that your Zinwell box was showing ratings, HD and subtitle data for all/most shows? Was it using the EIT data or the MHEG5 data (The MHEG5 data is branded with TV2 etc)? If it was showing HD data then I'm guessing possible MHEG5 as the DVB-S broadcast isn't HD.

I've had an initial play at decoding the MHEG5 data with some success but it's not as nice to do as the EIT data so I'll stick with that for the moment.

Adding the BBC World programs to TV1 is something that has been disucussed before in the mythtvnz community and I believe some people came up with some scripts to do it (for mythtv). The easiest way is to copy the data from Sky's BBC World channel to TV1 for the period that it's on. It's a little more complex as the time it's shown differs from night to night but it shouldn't be a major task.

The work on the scripts is dependant on how busy I am with real work so they don't get a lot of attention often.

Are you saying that your Zinwell box was showing ratings, HD and subtitle data for all/most shows? Was it using the EIT data or the MHEG5 data

I remember the information is displayed in the weekly EPG details which is from MHEG5. It shows HD for the shows that were purchased in HD, such as CSI: Miami and several other prime time shows on TV3, Private Practice on TV2, etc.

It is useful to know what shows are in HD and which are only upsampled. I don't have a surround sound system so that info doesn't interest me but at least 1 TV3 show displayed that information in the EPG, and this would be useful for others.

I'm not sure if TV1,2,3 is in HD on the Sky platform as I don't subscribe. Are these details not available?

If you get some time, it would be excellent if you could look at merging the BBC World details into TV1's schedule.

I recently changed my EPG from Reven to the listings--all source but have switched back. Running MediaPortal I get lots of random '0 minute' shows in my listings showing up before the actual show. For example I would have a showing of MASH from 4.30-4.30 (showing up as a thin slice) then the actual showing, from 4.30 to 5.00. And worse, a random times the TVNZ7 listings would replace the Prime listings (but still show up for TVNZ7). Any idea what could be causing this? I switched for the added BBC world data but these problems (further, I get random gaps in the programs) have sent my back.

Now I know the source is fine because I use it in my MythTV trial setup, and many others here use it through MentalInc's grabber. MP likes to have a DTD file so I used the one supplied by Reven and suspect this could be the problem. Can I get a replacement from somewhere? Any other ideas?

I've not heard of the issue with 0 length shows but I only use Mythtv.

The TVNZ7/Prime issue was a strange dvbsnoop caching issue and conflicting PIDS between the Sky/Freeview multiplexs. I believe this is fixed now as I havn'e had a report of it for quite a while after implementing a workaround.

I've not heard of the issue with 0 length shows but I only use Mythtv.

The TVNZ7/Prime issue was a strange dvbsnoop caching issue and conflicting PIDS between the Sky/Freeview multiplexs. I believe this is fixed now as I havn'e had a report of it for quite a while after implementing a workaround.

OK thanks for that. No idea if that file is any different to the one I had but I will completly clear out the old stuff and try again when i have the time.